Note that, as often in the liberal tradition, the main pragmatic argument Blackford uses to promote a secular regime is that it helps keep the peace between rival sects…Such arguments tend to overlook how such reasoning is difficult to generalize beyond the context of Western European Christianity in the modern era.

Possibly. But then…this may sound crude, but the reality is, Western Europe is a pretty good place to live, and it and its descendants are better places to live than most of the rest of the world. Yes, that does sound crude, but it doesn’t sound exactly fictitious, does it. There aren’t great waves of migrants going from France or Canada or New Zealand to live in Pakistan or China or Nigeria, and that’s not just some random accident. Yes Western Europe and its descendants are prosperous as well as liberal, but then it is generally thought that there is a pretty strong connection between the liberalism and the prosperity. So even if it’s true that secularism currently seems easier to defend in (let’s call it) the liberal world than outside it, that doesn’t really indicate that the illiberal world (to put it crudely) has a good case for theocracy.

But today’s multicultural urban environments are different. We have to deal with not one fragmenting religious tradition, but people thrown together from very different faiths, including various kinds of Muslims, Buddhists, African Christianities, indigenous traditions, etc. etc.

Well not exactly ‘thrown together’ – as indicated above, it’s more a matter of people going to such places on purpose, for reasons, because they want to. It’s a matter of mass migration, of large-scale immigration, of people who are drawn to these places because, for whatever reason, they prefer them to their places of origin. For at least some of those people, secularism and liberalism in general are among the reasons, are among the attractions that draw people from all these very different faiths into today’s multicultural urban environments. It is not necessarily the case that people who move from one place to another want their destination place to transform itself into a simulacrum of the place they left behind. People don’t generally leave home in order to find the same thing elsewhere, so the fact that the new place has many unfamiliar aspects is not automatically a reason to change those aspects. For all anybody knows those are the very aspects that draw people in the first place.

[I]t is hard to say that individualist tendencies are clearly dominant over desires to retain some measure of community identity and cohesion. Governmental bodies, unless driven by an explicit secularism in the French style, can effectively deal with representatives of religious communities as intermediaries. Keeping the peace often means ensuring that South Asian Shiites and Korean evangelicals and so forth do not feel disrespected and disadvantaged.

Yes it’s hard to say, but it’s hard to say the reverse, too. It’s hard to say (for sure; without risk of being dead wrong; etc) that desires to retain some measure of community identity and cohesion are clearly dominant over individualist tendencies. And then with the next sentence, we get into the really bumpy territory. What does ‘effectively’ mean there? Sure in some sense government bodies can pretend that various self-appointed people can claim to be ‘representatives’ of all putative members of their putative community, and the two can agree between themselves what is to be done, but the reality is that that’s basically just lazy bullshit, and it gives away genuine representation to people who are not elected and not reliably accountable. It shouldn’t be taken at face value as a good way to ‘deal with’ various ‘communities.’

I think Taner is making the mistake here of treating groups as uniform blocs, when the reality is that all groups are made up of particular individuals, and no matter how instructed or persuaded or indoctrinated those particular individuals are, it cannot simply be assumed that they all think alike on any one question. Even the question of secularism, even the question of individual rights. Some putative members of the putative group may well simply disagree with their putative representatives or leaders – but those people are marginalized and ignored by any system that pretends that self-appointed leaders really can represent people who have no voice.

In a multicultural environment, you have to be careful where and with whom you voice criticism…Atheists will denounce the intellectual pathologies that support supernatural beliefs, but they will do it in academic circles or in small discussion groups. They won’t go to the mass media. That would be foolish, even dangerous.

Well if that’s true we’re screwed – and it’s not true, at least not yet. There is a huge amount of social pressure on atheists to confine our atheism to some small closet or other, but there is also a pretty robust resistance to that pressure. If what Taner says really does describe ‘a multicultural environment’ then I don’t want to live in one – but fortunately I don’t think that’s the only possible understanding of ‘multicultural.’

[A] broader historical experience has made the darker, coercive aspects of liberal politics more obvious. Postmodern multiculturalists legitimately ask why a liberal individualist model, with its violent, anti-communitarian aspects, should remain dominant in the legal realm.

I don’t think so. I think compared to the darker, coercive aspects of communitarian politics, liberalism as such (not liberalism as a front for imperialism or cut-throat capitalism) looks pretty good. I’m not sure what Taner means by that passage, so I won’t belabor the point further, in case I have him wrong.

Now, I don’t particularly like all this. My particular interests drive me toward secular liberalism, even after repeated disenchantment. I dislike tight communities. Multicultural bullshit may be useful bullshit, but I still have an aesthetic dislike toward it that I cannot seem to overcome. But all of this is hardly a basis for public policy.

There I think he’s simply selling himself way short. What he’s describing is not a mere aesthetic dislike. ‘My particular interests’ are what drive people in general toward secular liberalism, especially when they’ve been able to develop a healthy sense of their own interests. People – women, in particular – who’ve been raised within ‘communities’ that see them as inherently and permanently inferior and subordinate are often inhibited from developing a healthy sense of their own interests, but that’s not a reason to raise that inhibition to a general principle. On the contrary. And people’s healthy sense of their own interests is indeed a basis for public policy.

28 Responses to “Liberalism can be defended”

For at least some of those people, secularism and liberalism in general are among the reasons, are among the attractions that draw people from all these very different faiths into today’s multicultural urban environments.

Yes, this. It’s what people who rail against all those “horrible Muslim immigrants” just don’t want to understand. Most of them don’t come to Europe to establish Sharia, most of them come here to escape from it.

For at least some of those people, secularism and liberalism in general are among the reasons, are among the attractions that draw people from all these very different faiths into today’s multicultural urban environments.

I’m sure a lot of those people are not consciously drawn to secularism and liberalism in the sense that they say “I’m going to Canada because it’s a more secular and liberal country than (say) Iran”.

But they are drawn to effects of secularism and liberalism. The higher standard of living, personal freedom, escape from religious coercion, etc.

And it’s important that the causal relationship between a secular/liberal society and the concomitant “good life” enjoyed by the majority of it’s citizens be pointed out in public forums.

@Steve: agreed. I can’t remember how often I’ve pointed out to Americans who go on and on about the dangers of socialized health care and other “liberal pinko commie” ideas, that there exists this virtually unknown area of the world called “Europe”. An area that actually has most of those things – and is actually a pretty pleasant place to live. In fact, more pleasant than the US, in general, as survey after survey shows. Go figure.

What I might add here is this: I don’t think the fact that there is net immigration into secular liberal countries establishes anything. There is massive immigration into many rich countries, not all of them secular by any means. The US is not secular, for example. But in case that’s going to be a point of disputation, consider all the resident foreign workers (slaves, really) streaming into Saudi and Gulf Arab countries.

Americans like to talk about everybody who emigrated to the US for religious freedom. Nice myth. The vast majority came here for rape and pillage. They still come for largely economic reasons. We like to talk bullshit about liberty because it sounds more noble.

Muslim immigrants to Europe are generally fairly honest that it is economic opportunity that drives them. I have never ran into a Turkish worker in Germany who said that she or her family emigrated because they could thereby be in a more secular environment.

agreed. I can’t remember how often I’ve pointed out to Americans who go on and on about the dangers of socialized health care and other “liberal pinko commie” ideas, that there exists this virtually unknown area of the world called “Europe”

An easier example would be Canada. They’re right next door. Sarah Palin’s family when she was growing up even lived right on the border, to make it easier to jump the border for health care!

True, about the people streaming into Saudi – I should have thought of that, because I’ve linked to plenty of stuff about how horribly they’re treated there.

Taner, I really wasn’t saying that Everyone Comes Here Because of Our Glorious Freedom – but I was saying that we can’t just assume that no one comes here because of rather than in spite of various freedoms. I think one can say that without lapsing into Bushy self-on-back-patting.

I do think you’re right that it’s just a fact that secularism can be divisive, can stir up trouble, etc. But I think you’re wrong that our shared preferences are just aesthetic! (Ask Maryam Namazie. Ask Southall Black Sisters. Both Secularist of the Year winners.)

Anecdotal alert – my ancestors came over to the US & Canada 2 generations ago from Poland and it wasn’t rape & pillage that attracted them, it was the opportunity to live their lives without being rampaged over by the Germans, Russians and the rest of the folks squabbling over the Baltic areas.

I don’t think that a secular/liberal viewpoint should have a privileged position in the market place of free idea, but a free market place it is in most western societies and it should take second place to no other viewpoints.

People deserve respect, ideas are up for grabs, if someone ridicules your ideas, then present better evidence to support them. If all you have in defense are hurt feelings then it’s probably not a very good idea to begin with.

Groups do not exist in the sense of being accorded rights, the freely associating members of the group have rights, the rest is accomodationalist bullshit.

And if the group does not allow for free association, Islam for example in the highly “secular” Saudi Arabia for example (although where you get the idea that Saudi Arabia is secular is beyond me, as Inigo Montoya says in the Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”) then as a coercive entity it should be resisted mightily.

I think Taner is at least partially right (it’s hard to know what the dominant view of migrants are). It IS economic reasons driving many or most people’s immigration, and many people DO seek to religionise (migrants or not), especially when proselytising is such a big component of some religions, especially Islam and Christianity. Islam is even more a threat to secularism, because of its inherent and inextricable political aspects.

Secondly, I’m not sure the main reason for Western prosperity is liberalism: I think perhaps colonialism and unsustainable environmental practice has had just as much – if not more – effect on the filling of Western coffers. Further, the current state of international politics creates an opportunity for Western capitalists to exploit the political instability of the global South to their own advantage, a political instability which is, I believe, largely because of the legacy of colonialism.

So, sometimes these two issues combine to make religious migrants even less respectful of their new Western societies. They express outright condemnation of Western values and practices, and they are not idealistically interested in the notion of tolerance at all, although they make take a pragmatic approach. There are some highly educated Islamists at my university who actively seek to politicise the Muslim student body, to make them resent the West for it’s colonialist past and the colonialist legacy. So while some migrants may be here mostly for economic reasons, they see no reason to be appreciative toward the host country for their new opportunities, because perhaps they see it as ill-gotten gain in the first place, and would be happy to turn the tables on the West from within.

My point of view is that despite historical and contemporary Western injustice, religion is not the answer: not even close. I think there are some things we have gotten right in the West, and social liberalism (as opposed to extreme economic liberalism) and secularism are among the most important. So important, that I am willing to stand up for them, vigorously. Therefore, I think Taner is wrong to think it foolish to voice criticism of religion in public, as a continuing defense of secularism is needed in light of the persistent existence of various religionist voices and movements.

I don’t think so. I think compared to the darker, coercive aspects of communitarian politics, liberalism as such (not liberalism as a front for imperialism or cut-throat capitalism) looks pretty good.

Quite. In fact it would take almost total ignorance of 20th Century history to conclude that the individualists that people need to watch out for. What group of individualists has killed tens of millions of people?

As a U.S. citizen and a lawyer, I disagree. The religiosity of a majority of the U.S. population (a religiosity that is 3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep, on average) makes this country an outlier in many ways, and our politicians and pundits do prattle on with the god-talk (a recent phenomenon since the 1930s), but (praise be to Th. Jefferson, Th. Paine, J. Madison, et al) we have a secular system of government and a Constitution and Bill of Rights that officially and clearly separates church from state. What other “developed” nation has a written constitition containing anything as clear and stark as our First Amendment and the last sentence of Article V (“. . . no religious test”)? Maybe Taner is using “secular” in some special physicist’s sense . . . .

@Taner Edis: yes, people do come to Europe mostly for economic reasons, but they often flee their country to get away from religious conflicts. This would be true for many of the refugees from Afghanistan, for instance.

I also think many people underestimate how difficult it is to just leave your home country, and not just for a neighboring country, where they have a similar language and culture, but to a country that is half a continent away, with a different language and even a different alphabet, and a culture that is completely foreign. A place where your skills and education are next to worthless, and where you will be immediately recognized as a foreigner – and by more than I’d like to admit as an intruder. The governments over there must be doing something terribly wrong, that somehow we here in western Europe must be doing better, for people to even consider taking such a huge step.

Oh, come now! The vast growth of the US (and Canada, and Australia, and most South American nations) through immigration took place after the Industrial Revolution, when these countries were offering well-paid work, political freedom and (sometimes) better weather; long after the early days of colonialism and exploitation.

@Emily: yes, exploitation of other countries and natural resources and the environment also have something to do with the wealth of the west. But that doesn’t account for the differences between western Europe and the US. By all metrics, western Europe is more secularized than the US. And by most metrics, western Europe is a better place to live in than the US. See for instance the studies by Tomas Rees and Gregory Paul (discussed by Jerry Coyne here). Clearly, the US is quite different from Europe in many aspects, and among the possible causes for those differences may well be more religiosity in the US, or more liberal and progressive attitudes in Europe.

@Jeff D: The US is not as exceptional as you seem to think. Here’s article one from the Dutch constitution (translated by me):

All who live in the Netherlands will be treated equally in equal circumstances. Discrimination because of religion, world view, political identification, race, gender, or any other reason, is not allowed.

And article 6.1:

Everyone has the right to freely profess his religion or world view, both individually as well as in a community of others, within each person’s responsibility to the law.

Deen, thanks for those translations. I intentionally didn’t use the word “exceptional” to refer to the U.S. I am not one of those “my country right or wrong / love it or leave it” types.

The Netherlands (and Denmark and Sweden) have admirable records as stable, secular, and (dare I say?) progressive societies, and such normative statements of principle (freedom of conscience, freedom to worship or not, etc.) are great. But even in many “secular” European countries (France? Germany?), there is a past record of church/state entanglement, and of public subsidization of particular religious institutions, that we have not had herein the U.S. since 1820. (I don’t know the Netherlands’ record or experience in this respect, i.e., whether the Dutch constitution or laws prohibit state establishment or subsidization of religion in general or particular religions).

Unfortunately, here in the U.S. we have a broad and misused tax-exempt status for religious organizations, and one of the reasons we have it is the Free Exercise Clause in our First Amendment.

I posted my last comment before reading one of Deen’s. I think there may be a lack of consensus about what “more secularized” or “secular” means. When I see “secular” applied as an adjective to “nation” or “nation-state,” I think of the system of laws and the government structure, and about whether the system separates church and state and does not compel either religious belief/practice or non-belief. When I see “secular” applied as an adjective to “culture” or “society,” I think of the general or predominant worldview of the population, including its acceptance of Enlightenment values (individual liberty, empiricism, humanist values) and, yes, lower levels of religiosity. In the latter sense, the developed countries in Europe have cultures or societies that are “more secularized” or “more secular” than the U.S. But their constitutions and laws are not necessarily “more secular” than the U.S.’s.

One of the frustrating things about living in the U.S. is the recently high level of apparent or self-claimed religiosity of the population, which I think is a result of (a) waves of populist anti-intellectualism in American culture and (b) the free competition between (and proliferation of) religious sects that has been permitted by the Establishment Clause in our First Amendment.

I think Edis’s prejudices are showing rather badly. I went back to his essay in the 50 Voices and some of the ambivalence expressed in that essay is now coming out rather loud and clear.

The main prejudice is the multicultural myth. It’s all about colonialism and exploitation. So, people came to the Americas for rape and pillage. Did they? Well, maybe some of them did, the Conqustadors, for example. But a lot of people came from Europe looking for a place where they could practice their religion in peace. That doesn’t mean that they were liberals, and so the early colonies were pretty monocultural and theocratic. And of course they did bump up against the aboriginal inhabitants, and, as anywhere, that led to friction, warfare, and often to injustice. No doubt about that.

However, it would be a mistake to think that the US is not secular because there are so many religious people in it. When the US, Canada, Britain, etc. were predominantly Christian, and actively Christian at that, it did not prevent them from being secular democracies, or at least broadly secular polities, at least, with restricted democratic participation.

But to move from those misunderstandings to the idea that contemporary democracies, no matter what the reasons people give for immigrating to them, must make room for communitarian governance, and rule by groups, cultures and religions, is to go wildly astray. People come here perhaps only because of the prosperity. So what? Let them come, but let them be aware that we do not want to be governed by religious entities, and we do not think that it is desirable that religious entities should play a central role in governance. This will just return us to situations like the one developing at breakneck speed in Nigeria, something Europe had enough of in the 17th century, enough to know that we don’t want to return to that.

Edis, it’s fine for you to have all sorts of ambivalences about religious belief, and about their epistemological basis, or their cultural rootedness. Possibly there is something about our cognitive apparatus that makes anthropomorphic understanding of our place in the universe a perfectly natural way of understanding ourselves, at least for many people. But there is no reasoned epistemological ground for beliefs based on this quirk of the human cognitive mechanisms. That it is a very unreliable way of understanding the world is quite clear from the vast number of different and incompatible belief systems that have resulted from it. If people can’t stop thinking in mythical terms, that’s one thing, but supposing that we should govern our public life on the basis of these divergent and often competing systems of belief is just asking for trouble. I certainly don’t want to live in a place where public policy pays undue respect to the myth-making mind. Indeed, there are already too many things that are governed by this kind of respect.

After all, religious beliefs are not determined by epistemically responsible enquiry. They are determined by definition, pure and simple. Dawkins argues against belief in the Judeo-Christian god. Christians (mainly) say that Dawkins’ god is not one that they recognise, and then they proceed, some of the time, to tell us something about the god that they would recognise as the one they worship. But none of it is given a reasonable epistemic ground; it is based solely on definition. Jesus, the God-Man of Christian myth, exists solely in his definition, and even that is not secure, since there are still many disagreements amongst Christians about the incarnation, about who Jesus was and how he was related to god.

However, absent some proof, so solid epistemic ground for their beliefs, we cannot permit religious belief to govern public policy. Religious people may put forward their proposals for public policy decision making, but if it has no ground other than personal belief, or the belief system of a community, no matter how cohesive – and, as Ophelia points out, that is never something we can take as given – then it has no place in governance. Once we start to do this, there will be no end, because there is no reasonable check on the content of religious belief, or on the substance of religious demands.

The stream in but they do not emigrate to those countries, they simply work there. You might just as well compare to ‘immigration’ on North Sea oil rigs. It would be interesting to test how many indentured workers in Saudi (say) would swap their job for US citizen status. I am guessing it would be close to all of them. That is not to say that people will not tolerate oppression for wealth, they obviously will some of them sometimes, but in general I think the utility of civic freedoms is clear even to poor and muslim people.

“For at least some of those people, secularism and liberalism in general are among the reasons, are among the attractions that draw people from all these very different faiths into today’s multicultural urban environments”

Deen has endorsed this alread but I want to re-endorse. It is a constant frustration that illiberal voices in immigrant communities are always treated as more authentic than others. Taner does not meet many muslim immigrant women who were motivated by the freedoms of the west, but he has probably not met many who made the decision to emigrate themselves. He should ask them ‘would you prefer the scoial conditions you are now living in if the religious and other freedoms of that society were withdrawn?’.

“It is a constant frustration that illiberal voices in immigrant communities are always treated as more authentic than others.”

Isn’t it just.

I understand it, in a way. It seems in a way “too easy” to take liberal voices as equally authentic, because liberal voices are too like us. It’s quite similar to thinking gangsta ‘culture’ is more authentic than that of, say, the Obamas, because after all, how hard is it to embrace the Obamas?

It’s a kind of moral workout, accepting or ‘tolerating’ or actively admiring that which is in fact alien to us. Sometimes this is fine – but as we keep being taught over and over again, other times it emphatically is not.

To back what Ophelia Benson is saying: the fact is that in spite of honor killings, female genital mutilation and similar news, most (!) muslim immigrants in Europe live quite as secularly as any European, preferring their persoal conscience over the teachings of their religion.

There are very few people who follow the teachings of any church in their everyday decisions, even if they adhere to a church, and this applies also to the muslim community, whose members do not worship more often than the avarage “christian” (let’s say in Switzerland, or Austria, or Germany).

In France you have the “Ni putains, ni soumises” movement, in Germany, Switzerland and Austria the Ex-Muslims, who try to give a voice to this quite secular muslim majority.

It is a big problem that muslim faith leaders are considered to speak for the muslims in general – as for the christian churches, we all know that when it comes to details they speak for a crazy minority, even where churches enjoy privileges (like catholic and protestant chruches in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, catholics in Poland, Slowakia, the lutheran in Sweden, Norway, the anglican in the UK, etc.etc.).

In Europe, we have learned it the hard way that if you take denominations seriously, it leads to war and bloodshed – sectarian wars in Switzerland in the 16th c., the 30 years’ war from 1618-1648 (which led to the conlcusion that the people must take the religion of their sire/lord), the inquisition (such experiences led the Czech to agnosticism, even atheism long before communism!).

The founding fathers of the US did know this, but we seem to start forgetting both in the US and in Europe…

This is really the crux of the matter right here—and as usual the “postmodern multiculturalists” have got it ass-backwards. What does their proposed solution have to recommend it over the secular-liberalist paradigm? And why is “communitarianism” a worthy goal in and of itself?

Apparently not a lot, other than the smug satisfaction of being “illiberal” and the bravado that comes from believing that it won’t be their voices being suppressed.

‘”It is a constant frustration that illiberal voices in immigrant communities are always treated as more authentic than others.”

This is a general problem in intellectual life: for many, everything is defined in terms of binary opositions so an authentic member of an ethnic minority must hold precisely the oposite opinions of his or her ethnic majority counterpart.

Deen, are you confusing social liberalism with economic liberalism? Part of my point is that I think we have seen too much liberation of economic activity, and not enough liberation of social activity. People can conflate these two different liberalisms to either laud or accuse the West, depending on which side of the political fence they are sitting on.

Emily: no, I am specifically speaking of differences in social politics, not economical (although the two will of course always influence each other). But in my first reply to you Iwas speaking about things like the differences in teen pregnancy statistics between the US and Europe. In the US they are the highest of the western world, and have been rising even more because of abstinence-only sex ed. Many countries in Europe, on the other hand, are among the lowest in teen pregnancy statistics, and comprehensive sex education is the norm there, not the exception.

And that’s only one example. Attitudes towards access to abortion and contraceptives, private soft drugs use, health care and other social securities are all more liberal in Europe than in the US. And we have a more functional society as a result: abortion rates are lower, drug crime is lower, fewer people are in jail, fewer people go bankrupt over medical bills, etc.